Urban redevelopment and modernity in Liverpool and Manchester : 1918-1939

Permission for use of Figures 6.1 and 6.2 has been granted by the Dean of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King. Copyright for the image of the scale model of Liverpool Catholic Cathedral, designed by Edwin Lutyens, at the Museum of Liverpool is held by Mike Peel. xiii privileges and pressures of academic life and remain great sources of advice. My family, Margaret, Jim, Tommy and John, fi rst fuelled my interest in history through frequent trips to Birkenhead Library (along with an illicitly acquired copy of a Kellogg ' s history book ... ) and have remained supportive of my academic career, many thanks to them and also to my extended family. Th e memories of my grandmothers, Veronica Cruikshank and Irene Wildman, two fashionably dressed young women in 1930s Liverpool, undoubtedly sowed the seeds of this project. Finally, I dedicate this book to Daniel and Daphne, Mario and Metta, who have kept me company, reminded me that there is more to life than academia, and continue to cheerlead me through the tough times with tea and cake, the NBA and the occasional mug of wine -thank you for standing close by. oft en completely unsuitable for the rooms, and ... . (the) mattress served as a general ground by day and a ... resting-place by night. ' 5 Liverpool was not the only city to suff er from problems of deprivation and Th e Times highlighted the ' grave position ' of both Liverpool and Manchester in 1921, where unemployment ' grows steadily worse ' as a consequence of the decline of the cotton industry. 6 In Manchester, the inability to revive its ailing cotton industry ensured the city ' s unemployment problem remained ' extremely grave ' throughout the 1920s. 7 Th ere, the unemployment rate of insured workers hit 18.7 per cent by 1931. 8 Again, living conditions were signifi cantly low in parts of the city and in 1923 even the city ' s Town Clerk admitted ' it would be diffi cult to fi nd worse houses in England ' . 9 Such images of urban decay and poverty remain associated with Liverpool and Manchester ' s interwar experience and overshadow the level of innovation and redevelopment that occurred in these cities between the two world wars. Although poverty, unemployment and social divisions persisted in both cities, a focus on these problems neglects the level of dynamism and civic ambition displayed by local politicians, planners, businessmen and religious leaders. Rather, the statements by Reilly and Manchester ' s Lord Mayor refl ect a wider culture of boosterism and investment in urban redevelopment. Local politicians responded to economic, political and social turbulence by investing in ambitious programmes of urban redevelopment. Urban transformation reinvigorated civic, consumer and religious local cultures and this book stresses the overall ambition, modernity and vitality of interwar Liverpool and Manchester. Liverpool and Manchester witnessed pioneering developments in civic design and architecture; in retail and shopping; and in cultures of religion and popular worship. Th eir analysis draws out the complexities of local and regional modernity more generally in interwar Britain. ## Historicising Liverpool and Manchester ' s twentieth-century experience A reassessment of interwar urban culture challenges historical accounts of Liverpool and Manchester ' s twentieth-century experience, which emphasize these entrenched narratives of urban decay and deprivation. Writing in 1982, economic historian Sheila Marriner suggested that Liverpool was ' synonymous with vandalism, with high crime rates, with social deprivation in the form linked with Northern England ' s interwar experience. Orwell ' s descriptions of Wigan stressed a place of fi lth and poverty, hunger and deprivation, such as, ' As you walk through the industrial towns you lose yourself in labyrinths of little brick houses blackened by smoke, festering in planless chaos round miry alleys and little cindered yards where there are stinking dustbins and lines of granny washing and half ruinous W. C.s. ' 16 Yet Orwell was not the only left -wing intellectual to use Lancashire as a way to communicate wider social problems to their audiences. Th e research movement Mass Observation, like Orwell, charted working-class life in Lancashire by undertaking an in-depth study of Bolton and attempted, with mixed success, to infi ltrate daily life and with the aim of using their fi ndings to bring about political reform. 17 As we shall see, Mass Observation oft en misinterpreted or misunderstood working-class culture. In doing so these commentators helped to manifest the perceived ' otherness ' of the northern working classes, which shapes wider historical discourse about a north -south divide between the two world wars. In a similar vein to the writings of Orwell and Mass Observation on Lancashire more generally, contemporary autobiographies and popular literature set in interwar Liverpool and Manchester also stressed narratives of deprivation and urban decay. Helen Forrester ' s autobiographical novel, Tuppence to Cross the Mersey , recalled the horror she felt arriving in Liverpool in 1930 aft er her middle-class family fell on hard times. ' How terrifi ed I had been! ' she wrote, ' How menacingly grotesque the people had looked ... grim and twisted, foulmouthed and coarse ... I had to make what I could of this grimy city and its bitterly humorous inhabitants and share with them their suff ering during the Depression years. ' 18 Forrester ' s account presented the impact of unemployment on Liverpool ' s already precarious port and shipping trades, exacerbated by wider economic problems and the Wall Street Crash. In 1932, 44 per cent of Liverpool ' s insured labour force in shipping was unemployed and, along with underemployment and low wages, unemployment caused widespread problems throughout the city. 19 ' Irish Slummy ' , Pat O ' Mara ' s account of life in the Scotland Road area of Liverpool, a section of poor housing between the city centre and docks associated with the city ' s Irish migrants, described the poverty and deprived living conditions inhabitants faced because of these problems. Homes were ' like cells in a penitentiary ' , he wrote, where ' the customary domestic procedure ... was to drink and fi ght. ' 20 Depictions of Manchester also stressed its social problems. Th e city ' s reputation as the ' shock city ' of the industrial revolution ensured many commentators and writers charted its poor living standards from the early nineteenth century, As this rich scholarship attests, class rightly remains the key organizing category in academic scholarship on Britain ' s twentieth-century experience. Nevertheless, looking at other forms of identity alongside class divisions off ers a diff erent perspective of Liverpool and Manchester ' s interwar experience. In particular, the interwar period has received increased scholarly attention over the past decade and there has been a shift towards thinking about connections, rather than diff erences, between individuals, classes and communities. 35 Historians of gender, such as Liz Conor in Th e Spectacular Modern Woman , for example, argue that the rise of mass media, fi lm and consumer culture across Western industrial societies led to a reshaping of feminine identity, closely linked to the emerging visual culture. 36 Conor also contributed to the Modern Girl Around the World Research Group, which claims that the Modern Girl, defi ned by her apparent disregard of traditional female roles, emerged as a global phenomenon between the two world wars. 37 Th is scholarship suggests that the characterization of the interwar period as a divided and fractured one might need further investigation, particularly by thinking about the connections between individuals and communities, and perhaps between women more specifi cally. An interest in the relational connections between individuals, alongside a focus on urban redevelopment, urban culture and experience as a way to understand identities refl ects a broader shift in urban history. Traditionally, urban historians concentrated on understanding the mechanics of the city, like transport, public health and governance. 38 However, the ' spatial turn ' asks historians to think of space not as a passive background but as an active actor. 39 Key texts by Edward Soja, David Harvey and Denis Cosgrove highlighted the importance of landscape and environment in understanding the relationships with social identities, but also contributed to rich debates about the use of ' space ' over ' place ' , which continues among urban historians. 40 Th e infl uence of Michel Foucault, in particular, signifi cantly reshaped approaches to urban scholarship and encouraged historians to think about the city as a site of power, leading to a number of accounts that considered the use of light, architecture and mapping as tools of governmentality in the mid-Victorian city. 41 Similarly, the work of Henri Lefebvre remains infl uential, especially as his 1974 work, Th e Production of Space , distinguished between spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces. 42 Th ese texts ask historians not only to consider the relationship between identities and urban space but also to think carefully about the conceptualization of urban space itself. Th e book develops ongoing debates about spatial analysis and applies a cultural urban history lens to the case studies of Liverpool and Manchester as two Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, to audiences from most European countries, Australia, the United States and Canada. At the conference banquet, Daniel Burnham, famous for building one of the fi rst American skyscrapers and as the designer of the World ' s Columbian Exposition in Chicago ( 1893) and the City of Chicago Plan (1909), heralded the international spirit of the town planning movement. Burnham declared: ' Men have come all over to realise a universal thought. Th is town planning has spread all over the world. In America there are hundreds of city planning commissions, in Germany there are hundreds of them. ... We hear of them in Japan, in Australia. Th e idea has become universal. ' 49 Yet historian William Whyte stresses the ' international indiff erence ' towards the conference, arguing that architects were driven by national concerns rather than transnational issues and suggests that ' the 1910 Conference was big news -and of immediate importance -almost nowhere outside Britain ' . 50 Nevertheless, its signifi cance lies in the openness of planners in Britain to ideas and trends pioneered abroad and the international conversations that took place between civic designers during the early twentieth century. British and American planners made frequent visits across the Atlantic throughout the period, which contributed to a dynamic culture of international exchange. 51 As we shall see, planners and architects in Liverpool were especially enthusiastic about engaging with wider trends and approaches, which shaped the nature and style of the city ' s redevelopment. Nor were international trends limited to the redesign and regeneration of the urban fabric, and urban transformation produced new forms of consumer and religious cultures that were similarly outward-facing and drew on wider trends, particularly from across the Atlantic. Although the book stresses the vitality of internationalism on Liverpool and Manchester ' s interwar urban culture, it refl ects a new interest in the local and in regional experiences among scholars of twentieth-century Britain. Historians of interwar Britain tend to focus on showing the national shared identity that emerged in response to the chaos and disruption of the First World War, particularly around Stanley Baldwin ' s unifying rhetoric of ' Englishness ' , to the detriment of civic and local identities. 52 By implication, narratives of the decay of Northern England ' s industrial cities are usually associated with accounts of the decline of localism. Historians, such as Simon Gunn, typically view 1914 as a turning point in the dramatic demise of civic power. 53 Robert Morris, for instance, suggests that the powerful municipal culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries relied on the infl uence and reach of local elites. By the 1920s and 1930s, however, ' key institutional structures which had supported all this began to be diminished, undermined and replaced. ... Th e towns were ' Soaring Skyward ' : Urban Regeneration "Uses Liverpool and Manchester as case studies to uncover the programmes of urban regeneration that transformed cityscapes and revitalised local economies and cultures between the wars."-- "Faced with economic decline, unprecedented levels of unemployment and new forms of political extremism during Britain's last great economic crash, politicians and planners in Liverpool and Manchester responded by investing in dramatic and ambitious programmes of urban regeneration. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 is the first book to provide the hitherto unknown story of the innovative transformation of these cities. Charlotte Wildman challenges academic scholarship in British history, which associates the post-1918 period with the emasculation of local government and the decline of civic culture. She shows that local politicians, planners, architects, businessmen and even religious leaders embraced innovative trends in creating distinct forms of urban modernities, which particularly changed the way women experienced the transformed city. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 offers a complex, interactive and multipolar interpretation of the ways cities develop, pointing to new methods and ways of understanding both interwar Britain and urban history more generally. At a time of debate and discussion about devolution and decentralisation of government, this book makes an opportune contribution to debates about urban governance and regionalism in contemporary Britain"-- Faced with economic decline, unprecedented levels of unemployment and new forms of political extremism during Britain's last great economic crash, politicians and planners in Liverpool and Manchester responded by investing in dramatic and ambitious programmes of urban regeneration. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 is the first book to provide the hitherto unknown story of the innovative transformation of these cities. Charlotte Wildman challenges academic scholarship in British history, which associates the post-1918 period with the emasculation of local government and the decline of civic culture. She shows that local politicians, planners, architects, businessmen and even religious leaders embraced innovative trends in creating distinct forms of urban modernities, which particularly changed the way women experienced the transformed city. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 offers a complex, interactive and multipolar interpretation of the ways cities develop, pointing to new methods and ways of understanding both interwar Britain and urban history more generally. At a time of debate and discussion about devolution and decentralisation of government, this book makes an opportune contribution to debates about urban governance and regionalism in contemporary Britain. This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Manchester University. Faced with economic decline, unprecedented levels of unemployment and new forms of political extremism during Britain's last great economic crash, politicians and planners in Liverpool and Manchester responded by investing in dramatic and ambitious programmes of urban regeneration. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 is the first book to provide the hitherto unknown story of the innovative transformation of these cities. Charlotte Wildman challenges academic scholarship in British history, which associates the post-1918 period with the emasculation of local government and the decline of civic culture. She shows that local politicians, planners, architects, businessmen and even religious leaders embraced innovative trends in creating distinct forms of urban modernities, which particularly changed the way women experienced the transformed city. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 offers a complex, interactive and multipolar interpretation of the ways cities develop, pointing to new methods and ways of understanding both interwar Britain and urban history more generally. At a time of debate and discussion about devolution and decentralisation of government, this book makes an opportune contribution to debates about urban governance and regionalism in contemporary Britain. "Faced with economic decline, unprecedented levels of unemployment and new forms of political extremism during Britain's last great economic crash, politicians and planners in Liverpool and Manchester responded by investing in dramatic and ambitious programmes of urban regeneration. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 is the first book to provide the hitherto unknown story of the innovative transformation of these cities. Charlotte Wildman challenges academic scholarship in British history, which associates the post-1918 period with the emasculation of local government and the decline of civic culture. She shows that local politicians, planners, architects, businessmen and even religious leaders embraced innovative trends in creating distinct forms of urban modernities, which particularly changed the way women experienced the transformed city. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 offers a complex, interactive and multipolar interpretation of the ways cities develop, pointing to new methods and ways of understanding both interwar Britain and urban history more generally. At a time of debate and discussion about devolution and decentralisation of government, this book makes an opportune contribution to debates about urban governance and regionalism in contemporary Britain"-- Provided by publisher Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Illustrations and Tables List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction: Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918–39 Part One: Civic Culture 1. ‘Soaring Skyward’: Urban Regeneration 2. Civic Week Celebrations Part Two: Consumer Culture 3. ‘For Profit or Pleasure’: New Cultures of Retail, Shopping and Consumer Culture 4. Performing Fashionable Selfhoods in the Transformed City Part Three: Catholic Urban Culture 5. Gender and Religious Selfhoods in Manchester 6. The Cathedral That Never Was? Conclusion: The Second World War and the Challenge to Interwar Urban Culture Appendix Notes Bibliography Index